INTRODUCTION xxiii 



by means of the study of grasses (Letter XL. to Barrington), 

 and his recognition of the effect of earthworms on the fertility 

 of soils (Letter XXXV. to Barrington). He does not, it is 

 true, expressly remark that earthworms, by perpetually bring- 

 ing up earth from below and depositing it on the surface of 

 the land, cause stones and other objects to sink into the 

 ground. The full importance of their operations and the 

 exact manner in which they are carried out was left to be 

 set forth by Charles Darwin, one of those "inquisitive and 

 discerning persons " whom White longed to set working upon 

 the economy of the earthworm. 



Mr. Warde Fowler x gives White credit for being the first, 

 so far as he knows, to notice protective resemblance, which 

 has since become so fruitful a study. In Letter XVI. (April 

 18, 1768) White gives the following description of the stone 

 curlew : " The young run immediately from the egg, like 

 partridges, etc., and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the 

 dam, where they skulk among the stones, which are their best 

 security ; for their feathers are so exactly of the colour of our 

 gray spotted flints that the most exact observer, unless he 

 catches the eye of the young bird, may be eluded". It is 

 very singular that White's friend, whom he calls " a man of 

 observation and good sense, but no naturalist," John Woods 

 of Chilgrove, near Chichester, 2 should give the same account 

 of the stone curlew in much the same words (Letter 

 XXXIII., November 26, 1770). " They breed on fallows and 

 layfields abounding with gray mossy flints, which much re- 

 semble their young in colour, among which they skulk and 

 conceal themselves/' The date of Woods 1 observation cannot 

 be ascertained ; he quotes from his own Naturalists Journal. 

 The mere documentary evidence fails to show whether the 

 words are those of White or Woods, but we can hardly doubt 

 that it was really White who hit upon this capital observation, 

 worthy of the best passages in the History of Selborne. 



Whitens almost total lack of ambition enhances, as it 

 happens, the literary quality of his History. There is none 



1 Summer Studies of Birds and Books, p. 217. 



2 John Woods was brother to Henry Woods, who married Gilbert White's 

 sister, Rebecca. 



